Perennial, stout, 15-40 cm tall, simple, yellow with purplish tinge, turning brownish when dried, glandular-pubescent. Scales yellow to purplish brown, ovate-lanceolate, up to 20 (-30) mm long. Spikes lax, few-flowered. Bracts ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, somewhat shorter than the corolla-tube. Calyx exceeding or as long as the bract, 2-segmented, each lateral segment ovate-oblong, shortly 2-fid to above the middle. Corolla 20-30 mm long, campanulate, glandular-pubescent, yellowish or tinged with reddish-brown, erect with curved back; tube-uniformly broad; lobes of almost equal size, subrounded, crisped and denticulate, lower ones almost fimbriate. Stamens inserted low down the corolla tube; filaments hairy below, glandular above; anthers pilose, almost woolly along the sutures, younger ones firmly coherent. Stigma bilobed, purple.